Beck says he was planning to sample Labi Siffre’s ‘I Got The…’ before Eminem beat him to it.

Marshall Mathers famously used the track in his massive 1999 hit ‘My Name Is…’, but wasn’t the first to think about sampling the 1975 song.

Speaking to Matt Wilkinson on Apple Music to mark 25 years of his fifth album ‘Odelay’, Beck revealed that his producers the Dust Brothers were planning on sampling ‘I Got The…’ for him for the follow-up to his 1999 record ‘Midnite Vultures’.

However, in a meeting with Interscope executive Jimmy Iovine, Beck was played an advance version of ‘My Name Is…’, which sampled the same song.

“I went in my first meeting with Jimmy Iovine and I had ‘Midnite Vultures’ and I was going to play it for him,” Beck told Wilkinson. “He said, ‘Before we do anything, I just signed this kid. It’s going to be massive. It’s going to change everything. We just got the video. They just sent it to us today. Sit down and watch this’.”

Beck continued: “Me and my manager sat down and we’re looking at each other like, ‘Ah.’ So he puts on the record and the video comes on and it’s like, ‘Hi, my name is.’ And it’s this blonde kid rapping. And the song is funny. And then my jaw’s on the floor, because the loop, the sample is a Wurlitzer keyboard, just like on ‘Where It’s At’.”

He added: “It’s the sample that the Dust Brothers were saving for me to be the follow-up for ‘Where It’s At.’ It’s the exact sample. ‘I Got The Blues.’ Which we were saving for the follow-up to ‘Midnite Vultures’. And then Dr. Dre got to it first and he used it for Eminem’s first single.”

Listen to the full interview here.

To celebrate 25 years of #Odelay, Beck joined @w1lko on @AppleMusic to recognize this Essential Album. Listen to their conversation here: https://t.co/eMNuqwM0EF pic.twitter.com/a4hDkJ5gxP

— Beck (@beck) June 18, 2021

In other news, Beck recently cancelled his UK and European tour due to ongoing COVID-19 concerns.

His tour was set to take in dates at London’s Brixton Academy and Manchester’s Victoria Warehouse, among others, but the entire run of shows has now been cancelled with rescheduled dates to follow at a later time.

Beck’s latest album, ‘Hyperspace’, was released in 2019. Recently, he collaborated with NASA on a new visual album based around the record.